BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — The new law signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday, the Community Assistance Recovery and Empowerment Act, the CARE Act, means the state will be spending $15.3 billion dollars to address homelessness in California, but not everyone is in favor.
Provisions of the CARE Act will be implemented in Kern County at the end of 2024, and will be working through the California civil court system to provide court ordered treatment to those who are 18 years or older and experiencing a severe mental illness while not being enrolled in any ongoing voluntary treatment.
According to those behind providing housing and other services to unhoused people in Kern County, they already have the resources ready two years ahead of the scheduled implementation date. Despite Newsom calling the act “transformative,” the county already has a strong focus on homelessness and mental health services, which tend to overlap, according to Anna Laven with the Bakersfield Kern Regional Homeless Collaborative.
“The CARE Court act isn’t necessarily specific to those experiencing homelessness. It can certainly potentially overlap with a lot of the people that we are looking to serve,” said Laven. “Not everyone who is experiencing homelessness also has a severe mental health disorder or a behavioral health need, but many do.”
Stacy Kuwahara from Kern Behavioral Health and Recovery Servicesagrees, saying that with the resources the county has in place, they can only progress.
“Knowing that we have this already set up really paved the way for us to be in a very strong place over the next few years as CARE court does more to become operational,” said Kuwahara.
The CARE court plan includes short-term stabilization medications, recovery support, and access to social services and housing, and civil rights activists are taking issue with provisions in the law that allow the court to medicate and house a person against their will.
“The governor has taken us in a wrong direction, basically. Even though it’s called so-called ‘CARE court,’ there is nothing caring about it,” said Kath Rogers, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California. “It’s an outdated model of involuntarily coercive treatments by a new court system.”
Rogers also points out that people want housing, medical care, and mental health services on a voluntary basis. They are critical of the legislature’s attempt to solve the problem by building an entirely new court system focused on forcing people into treatment rather than providing them directly with the resources they need.
“This model is not supported by medical research,” said Rogers. “We believe it will cause more trauma and more harm to people who are already vulnerable.”
Kern County will have a chance to see how the new law might affect a city. A CARE court pilot program scheduled to start in October of 2023 will be implemented in other California counties, including Glenn, Orange, Riverside, San Diego, Stanislaus, Tuolumne, and San Francisco before the law is officially implemented in Kern County in December of 2024.
